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Wednesday, November 2, 2016

What Is the Best Book No One Seems To Have Heard Of? (Nominations Needed)

Image description: Question Mark
I continue to do jazz hands posts and get doctor-ordered bedrest for bronchitis. I'm writing on my manuscript, but keeping it easy for the under-deadline stuff that I'm usually doing for this blog. Thank you all for your patience and support.

They're the books no one seems to have heard of. Maybe folks don't even know who the author is. You love them, but for some reason they just haven't caught on. Today's poll is for all your esoteric, cult, and just plain unknown-to-the-world favorites.

Of course....voting might get a little weird as people vote on titles most have never heard of, but the small turn out might be worth the

The Rules:

You may nominate TWO (2) books. Any nominations you give me beyond your first two will be ignored because I'm megalomaniacal. (Though I will count them as "seconds" if someone else nominates the same book.)

As usual, I leave discretion up to you. Best selling authors obviously have no place here, but I'm not going to dig through the New York bestsellers lists for the year in question to make sure that each nominee has been sufficiently unpopular. If you believe you like a book that it seems like no one else has read and the author isn't a household name, we'll take it.

You may, and SHOULD, "second" as many of the existing nominations as you wish. While I recognize that a poll about "books no one has ever heard of" might not get enough seconds to make that the cut off rubric, it is likely that at least one or two people out there have given your book a try and will chime in. (At last you know you're not alone!) We may run this poll without seconds if we don't get enough, but usually there are too many raw nominations for a reasonable poll. So this might be the time if you know that one friend who's also read it, to cajole them into giving you a second.

While I technically take nominations from anywhere, you should make a comment to this post. Comments left on social media where I cross post (like my Facebook page) don't tend to get seconded there because they are so quickly buried beneath ever spewing content.

I'll take nominations till mid-month, and then I will put up the poll.

87 comments:

  1. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

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  3. To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust and The Boy From the Burren: First Book of the Painter by Sheila Gilluly.

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  4. I nominate Why Animals Sleep So Close to the Road (and other lies I tell my children) by Susan Konig

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  5. The World Was My Garden: Travels of A Plant Explorer by David Fairchild
    I don't know if you're looking for non-fiction, but this book is a trip. Problematic as hell, but illuminating.

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  6. In the Eye of Heaven by David Keck. A gritty medieval fantasy with a dark magic edge. Keck wrote a second story In a Time of Treason in 2008 and then the wait for a third volume has hit Martinesque proportions. Really enjoyable.

    The Medair Duology by Andrea K Host, Silence of Medair and Voice of the Lost. Better read together and available in essentially one volume, they tell the story of a reluctant hero who rides off to save the world, finds what she needs but lays down to rest in the wrong place. She awakens with her victory torn away by time and her world overturned.

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  7. Libriomancer by Jim C Hines
    Hounded by Kevin Hearn

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  8. The War between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids by Stanley Keisel.

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  9. Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite
    My Soul to Keep (first of series) by Tananarive Due

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  10. Hell In a Storm (Demon Siege Trilogy Book 1) by KJ Ester
    Bound and Hagged by James McDonald

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  11. The Sea Came in at Midnight - Steve Erickson
    &
    Black Wine - Candas Jane Dorsey

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  12. I'm not sure how a trilogy fits in there, so I'm going to say Behemoth by Peter Watts because it's the middle and best of the Rifters trilogy.

    And second nominee Butterfly and Hellflower by Eluki Bes Shahar (aka Rosemary Edgehill), which was a trilogy that got smushed into one long book.

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    1. Man, I loved Butterfly and Hellflower -- I'm sorry I didn't see this in time to second the nomination and get it/them into the final poll! So wonderful, so unsung!

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  13. Sewer, Gas & Electric by Matt Ruff
    Wizenbeak by Alexis A. Gilliland [Anything by Gilliland is amazing]

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    1. Sewer, Gas & Electric is unknown? Damn -- I loved that book, assumed it was famous. :-)

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  14. The Lord of Light

    And

    The Principia Discordia

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    1. Second both enthusiatically, but I'm not sure Lord of Light is unheard of.

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  15. The Kencyrath series by PC Hodgell
    Ten Points for Style, the Drake Majstal trilogy, by Walter Jon Williams

    Next month, maybe unknown authors?

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    1. Also, hard to get seconds when, by definition, most people have never heard of what is being nominated.

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    2. Second the seconding conundrum.

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    3. Thirding the seconding conundrum

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    4. I know, and I knew that would be a characteristic of such a poll.

      Yet we got some good ones and probably more reaction than if I just opened comments to "Recommend a book."

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  16. Almanac of the Dead

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  17. Second
    Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite and also nominate
    Sum: Tales of the Afterlife by David Eagleman

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    1. Exquisite Corpse -second

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    2. Second: Sum: Tales of the Afterlife

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  18. Crashcourse by Wilhelmina Baird

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  19. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
    and the Seafort Saga by David Feintuch

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  20. Watching the Door by Kevin Myers

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  21. I Will Bear Witness by Victor Klemperer

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  22. Emerald Eyes by Daniel Keys Moran. It's the first of a series, somewhat a relic of the 80s, but really quite a good read.


    The Abyss by Orson Scott Card. It's a novelization of the movie, which included backstories for all the characters that they received before filming. It adds some amazing depth to the characters in the film. Also, if you've never seen the original, director's cut, do so, the ending is fantastically better.

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  23. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

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  24. The Book with No Name by Anonymous author

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  25. 1) The Bellwether Revivals - Benjamin Wood 2) The Meaning of Night - Michael Cox

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  26. Seiobo There Below - László Krasznahorkai

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  27. Night's Dawn Trilogy by Petwr Hamilton (I recommend this constantly and in 20 years only 2 people had heard of it. It is my fav sci fi of all time)

    Steelbeach by John Varley (not so great with grammar but excellent ideas!)

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    1. Second Steel Beach. Also recommend his Blue Champaign

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    2. Seconding Nights Dawn, one of my favorite SciFi ever.

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  28. Red Sands: And Arabian Adventure, by Paul B. Thompson and Tonya R. Carter. It's my favorite D&D story, even though it's "technically" not a D&D story. (Still published by TSR though).

    The Whims of Creation, by Simon Hawke. Hawke's "Wizard of 4th Street" series did pretty well, although I don't know if they were best sellers, but this book seems to have been under the radar in my circles. It's a perfect pairing of Sci-fi and classic fantasy blending, but not blurring, at least for me.

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  29. Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart. The grandfather of post-apocalyptic fiction, this novel was written in 1949 but was reviewed as recently as a few years ago in the Boston Globe (2004?). It's both realistic and metaphorical, and makes the reader contemplate both what it means to be American and what it means to be human.

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  30. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

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  31. The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour

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  32. Left hand of darkness, Ursula leguinn

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  33. Undiluted Minds by Danae Ayusso.
    New Adult Coming of Age Dark Humor that will rip your heart out at the end and make you laugh so hard you'll cry.

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  34. The Magus, John Fowles.

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  35. A Snowflake in My Hand by Samantha Mooney.

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  36. Nominate Callahan's Lady by Spider Robinson

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  37. Nominate Air by Geoff Ryan
    Nominate Glasgow Fairytale by Alastair D McIver

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  38. Kit's Wilderness by David Almond.

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  39. Rhapsody: book one of the Symphony of Ages series.

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  40. The Magic and the Healing by Nick O'Donohue

    Miranty and the Alchemist by Vera Chapman

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  41. The Book of Earth by Marjorie B. Kellogg

    --CM

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  42. "Windhaven", by George Martin and Lisa Tuttle

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  43. "Into the Forest" by Jean Hegland.

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  44. Nominating Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.

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    1. Second Playing Beatrice Bow. I still have my copy somewhere.

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  45. Dave Duncan's Magic Casement series

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  46. The White Mountains by John Christopher. I think that is the name of one of the books in the trilogy. It was a post nuclear war dystopia I read when I was a kid (so 80's sometime) that I still remember as having an impact on me.

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    1. This was the first book in the Tripods series, right? Seconded.

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  47. Nobody mentioned "Archer's Goon" by Diana Wynn Jones, but I'm assuming that's because it's way too well-known.

    Still, it's got one of my favorite definitions (as a 6'8", 380-lb guy) from all of science fiction: "Goon: someone who fades into the foreground, and stays there."

    :-)

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